The app could become less useful or relevant once the Pluto flyby is over.

Bottom Line

The Pluto Safari iOS app is a great way to keep up to date on the latest news and images from our first close encounter with the icy, enigmatic dwarf planet.

On July 14, 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will pass very close to Pluto on our first mission to this small, enigmatic world that has captured the public's imagination while setting some of our greatest scientific minds at odds with one other. The free Pluto Safari iPad app provides a good way for anyone interested in Pluto or space travel to keep up on the latest from this mission through timely articles and news pieces filled with multimedia content. Material is presented in a lively and accessible way that should hold the interest of laymen or students.

The app can be used on an Apple iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. There is also a version for the Apple Watch, as well as one for Android. I tested the app on an Apple iPad Air 2 running iOS 8.3. When I first opened the app, I chose to set it to receive push notifications, and sure enough, notices of the addition of new articles regularly appear on my iPad's screen. I don't always enable notifications with the apps I install, but as Pluto Safari is centered on a single mission and flyby, I wanted to be sure to get the most out of the app.

Finding Your Way Around Pluto Safari The interface is simple, yet tastefully designed. The home screen is a depiction of Pluto and its large moon Charon (among astronomers who disagree with Pluto's reclassification, many consider the pair a double planet), each in crescent phase, with the faint and distant Sun beside them. In the bottom left corner, beneath the words "New Horizons Pluto Flyby," is a countdown clock, giving the time until the flyby in days, hours, minutes, and seconds. Below it, the distance to Pluto is given (in kilometers). The screen's lower-right corner show a speaker icon. By tapping it, you can toggle the app's soundtrack—ambient space music—on and off.

Five circular buttons labeled Timeline, Location, Guide, News, and Poll, are set in an arc around the illustration of Pluto and Charon. The Timeline highlights important dates in the life of the mission, from liftoff on January 19, 2006 to its impending Pluto-Charon flyby on July 14, 2015, to possible flybys of other Kuiper-belt objects between 2016 and 2020. Most timeline items are accompanied by diagrams, accessible through a blue View button below the text of the timeline entry, showing the spacecraft or Pluto's position. The diagram accompanying the entry for the Pluto-Charon flyby shows an animation of the passage of New Horizons by Pluto and then onward into the void.

Six Ways of Viewing a Dwarf Planet Tapping the Location button offers you a choice of six different views (sky charts showing Pluto and/or New Horizons from different vantages). Solar System View offers a look at the entire solar system, including the current positions of New Horizons and Pluto, as seen from outside and above the plane of the solar system. The Solar System Close-Up View looks at Pluto and New Horizons, and back at the Sun and inner planets, from a point just outside the solar system. The New Horizons Spacecraft View displays the New Horizons craft in the foreground and Pluto in the background. Pluto System View is a face-on view of Pluto and its system of moons.

The Pluto from Earth view shows Pluto's position in our sky. In my case, during testing, it just showed the ground, as Pluto was below the horizon. At the bottom of each screen, however, are controls that let you change the time. By advancing the time, I was able to bring Pluto above the horizon and see its position in a dark sky, among the stars of Sagittarius. The last menu item, Kuiper Belt Objects View, shows some of the most significant small objects in the outer solar system. At the bottom of the page is a banner that takes you to a description of the app. A link takes you to an ad page for other Simulation Curriculum products, including the SkySafari 4 planetarium-style astronomy app. Its predecessor, SkySafari 3, is a PCMag Editors' Choice.

News and Features The Guide button takes you to a list of Pluto- and New Horizons-related topics, including picture- and diagram-heavy essays on Pluto's discovery, a New Horizons mission overview and timeline, and a look at the spacecraft's scientific instruments. One entry discusses how it came about that Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet, and the arguments in favor of and against this decision. The circle labeled Poll lets you vote on whether you think Pluto is or is not a planet, with the results being sent to the International Astronomical Union. With just under 5,000 votes cast as of this writing, the balloting among Pluto Safari users is running 2 to 1 (actually 67 percent to 33 percent), in favor of restoring Pluto's status as a planet.

The final button, News, takes you to a list of articles, mostly news stories with multimedia content about New Horizons and Pluto. At the top of the list is a link that lets you access the latest Pluto images in the app's image gallery. The most recent item in the news section is titled Pluto Gets Its Own Sound Track! Plus Real-Time Data from New Horizon. Said sound track is a song by folk musician Craig Werth, included as part of a YouTube video by Werth and Christine Lavin, which is embedded in the story. The second part of the story provides a link to a page on NASA's New Horizons site (pluto.jhuapl.edu) onto which the latest, unprocessed images from the mission are uploaded.

Beyond the Pluto Encounter This app offers anyone interested in the one-time (and perhaps future) planet Pluto a way to get the most of the New Horizons encounter, our first-ever flyby of what was long considered our solar system's last unexplored world. It is quite possible that the mission will shed enough light on Pluto's nature to determine whether its reclassification was justified. Be that as it may, it's bound to answer some longstanding questions about the icy objects that orbit at the fringes of our solar system, as well as raise new questions and perhaps inspire further missions.

Will the app still be relevant, and regularly updated, once the Pluto flyby is over? After Pluto's day in the Sun (albeit with our star's light diminished some 1,600-fold), New Horizons will continue sending data back to Earth for at least a year after the encounter, and doubtless, articles about New Horizons discoveries will continue for a long time after that. NASA also hopes to redirect New Horizons to pass close to another, more distant object in the Kuiper Belt. The most likely target, probably an icy body with a diameter of about 30 miles, has been designated PT1, and the encounter would take place in early 2019. So, although the New Horizons encounter with Pluto is clearly Pluto Safari's heyday, the free app is likely to continue to offer new content—at least from time to time—for many years to come.

About the Author

As Analyst for printers, scanners, and projectors, Tony Hoffman tests and reviews these products and provides news coverage for these categories. Tony has worked at PC Magazine since 2004, first as a Staff Editor, then as Reviews Editor, and more recently as Managing Editor for the printers, scanners, and projectors team.
In addition to editing, ... See Full Bio

Pluto Safari (for iPad)

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